Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
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I have to agree with Tim. I tell our employees all the time that our job is to solve clients’ problems, whether it’s for a high-end video or a slice and dice low-end one.
When these clients do have budget and need for a higher-end project, they remember we understand that they just want their problems solved.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I don’t see too many posts on this or any other shared storage forums about iscsi or SAS being used for shared video editing, with the exception of Avid DS Nitris and ProTools, which both require block-level file writing and iscsi can be a less expensive option compared to fibre channel.
From the reading I’ve done, they both also seem more complicated to setup and manage than either FC or GB ethernet. I know Editshare has an iscsi option in their product mix, but the majority of their solutions use GB and 10GB ethernet (NAS) solutions.
You could probably build something similar to the link you provided using fibre channel and ethernet, but I’m not really sure of the advantage of using both when 10GB ethernet solutions are now possible.
But just about anything that’s going to provide enough speed for mutliple channels of HD editing is going to be relatively expensive…likely at least $20k. You also have to think about archiving/backup when you build or buy a system. You’d hate to have 12TB or video, audio and project files rely solely on RAID 5 or RAID 10 if your business is built around all that data.
Others can probably give you much more specific answers, but building something like you suggest would probably be complicated with no guarantees of working unless you could find someone who’s already done it successfully.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I wasn’t suggesting that we shouldn’t tell new posters to read the stickies and do a search. That should certainly be done.
But there’s no reason to chastise people in the process, which is done quite often all across this site on many different forums. That attitude is really unique to this site and just doesn’t happen on virtually any of the other forums I participate in (and they’re numerous). On other sites, people are very respectful of newbies, despite their lack of knowledgde about forum subjects or forum protocols. Site and forum moderators often go out of their way to help new members.
As for industry professionals offering their assistance freely, just because we’re doing it for free doesn’t mean we can’t be respectful of people. Plus, people can certainly choose to simply not answer a post they think provides too little information.
I’d suspect most people that post without providing enough info are often thrown into doing tasks under deadline that they’re not trained to do and know absolutely nothing about. We see it everyday with our corporate clients. Marketing Directors and Brand managers who suddenly become web administrators, video producers, writers and designers because the company eliminates the creative staff. Or new hires who are asked to suddenly be compression experts when they’ve not been taught a thing about it in college or their previous jobs.
I for one don’t mind helping folks and trying to be nice in the process. I know I’d appreciate the same treatment and respect if I was in their shoes.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
If you’re not a regular reader of contributor on internet forums, you likely wouldn’t know to read the “stickies” at the top of the page…or even know what a sticky is for that matter.
On many industry forums those little nuggets don’t particularly stand out as something that’s a must read prior to posting or looking for an answer. Searching internet forums is also a crap shoot at best. I’ve searched for my own posts on this and many other forums to retrieve a link or re-read some information I got from somewhere else and I literally could not find them…and I knew the subject matter, keywords and knew that I posted it.
That’s certainly NOT a knock on Creative Cow’s site as the same thing happens on Yahoo Groups, 2-Pop, Doom, Cinematography.com and dozens of other forum sites, including large commercial sites like Microsoft’s knowledge base and Apple’s forums, which are particularly obtuse when it comes to its search function.
Sure some people want an easy answer and don’t know how to provide enough information. But they surely won’t learn how to be better site members if they get so alienated after their first post that they never come back.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I believe Firefox has a plug-in called FireFTP that runs right from the browswer but is actually a dedicated FTP client. It has some limitations as far as the number of files you can concurrently upload/download and things like that, but it’s a great freebie tool.
As for where to plug-in the info, you typically would type in ftp://xxxx.xxx or whatever their FTP string is into the site address tab of an FTP client. Then you’d also need to know the user name and password, unless it’s an anonymous and non-secure site (which I doubt).
You can also google how to do it and find a bunch of short tutorials.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I don’t think it’s the compression but the flash player you’re using. I tried viewing your test page on 3 different computers using 3 different browsers (IE, Firefox and Chrome) and it crashed or locked up the browser every single time (6 tries in all). Chrome and Firefox both gave error messages (after I had to end the process) that the “Flash plug-in has crashed.” Each computer I used has the latest Flash plug-in and each plays HD videos from Hulu, YouTube, Vimeo and other sites without issues…other than occasionally buffering.
So I think there’s something seriously wrong with the programming in the Flash Player you’re using. Is it a third party player? A custom programmed one? Or…if you’re using javascript to control the flash player, then the javascript programming is messed up too.
The video actually looked ok as it stuttered and jumped along…although it never played smoothly before the page crashed.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
If your client wants the video to play reliably on a high number of computers, I’d forget about doing it in HD. We do a lot of compression for corporate clients, especially training videos, and we’re lucky to get videos to play smoothly at 512×288. Corporate people in the U.S. tend to be a step behind in terms of computer speed and power, as well as their networks. If it still works, they’re reluctant to upgrade.
As an example, we did a video a while back and kept getting complaints that employees couldn’t get sound when they played it. Can you guess why? They didn’t have speakers or sound cards on the computers! And no I’m not kidding.
Other clients have been unable to play videos posted to training sites because IT departments have blocked Flash or Flash Player updates, so corporate people had versions of Flash that were 5-6 years old, which couldn’t play H264 content.
Even large, well-known corporate clients often have excruciatingly slow internet connections…with even 480×272 video choking upon playback.
The bottom line is to test any solution you propose to make sure it will work and play smoothly.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Try doing the smaller one at 480×272. Adobe recommends that pixel sizes be multiples of whole numbers, with 16 being the multiple that produces the best encoding results.
I believe this has to do with how compression schemes compress the image. I’ve read that H264 compresses in blocks of 16×16 pixels, so that would explain why you’ll get better results using multiples of 16.
I don’t know for sure that this will correct your problem, but it’s the only reason I can think of that your smaller version doens’t look as good.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I spent 3 years in the early 90s making grant supported films. Most grant organziations, be they government, educational or corporate (and those in between), are ok with grantees paying themselves out of grants. However, most if not all granting organizations have unrealistic expectations about what filmmakers should pay themselves.
Time and again the only line item we were ever questioned about was salary for the two principal filmmakers (I had a partner). The National Endowment for the Humanities questioned it, the state arm of the same organization questioned it, Public Television even questioned it. I posted some tips on writing grants for films about a week ago.
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/17/869293
However, it’s probably the most important line item you SHOULD NOT trim. If you cannot live and pay your bills, you certainly won’t get the film made and the granting agencies will have nothing to show for their money. We were young and stupid and we agreed to trim when the granting agencies asked us to. It ended up taking us twice as long to get the films made and salary was a constant source of angst between me and my partner. I was on the side that we should be paid commensurate with producers who had the same level of experience we did (about 8 years at the time), while my partner would’ve lived in a hut and foraged for berries if it allowed her to get the film made.
There’s certainly something to be said for persistance and dedication, but most granting organizations understand that you have to get paid. It’s just that most (if not all) don’t have guidelines or pay scales to judge whether a filmmaker’s salary estimate is accurate and appropriate.
There are also some granting agencies (be they public or private) that will only allow you to spend their money on specific things, some of which are not salary related.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
If you get anyone to spend more than 2 minutes watching an unsolicited video sent via a link in an email…bottle it and sell it!
We can’t get people to spend 15 seconds reading an email about a deadline oriented project that needs answers by noon in order to go out the door that day!
I’d say 2 minutes max…a crisp, superbly-written, well-edited minute would be even better!
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com